


everything that's broken (leave it to the breeze)

by maharieel



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Siblings, Ryder Siblings, i have a lot of feelings about these twins ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-12-31 20:24:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12140424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharieel/pseuds/maharieel
Summary: sidra felt like they spent a lot of time after the end of the world doing that: sorting and cursing and scrubbing blood from their clothes. it was a simple, brutal existence.(or: a study of two siblings surviving through and after the end, together)





	everything that's broken (leave it to the breeze)

Sidra had always thought the end of the world would take time. The decay of life and civilisation is not something that crumbles overnight, and so she had assumed it would be a blotch of grey crawling over the world at its own pace, slowly devouring them one arduous piece at a time. That part, she’d anticipated. It was the silence of it all that had made her skin crawl, because since when was the end of the world supposed to be so quiet?

She doesn’t remember much of it; the end’s a dark blur in her memory, the smoke of broken car engines drifting through the front door and the twitching nerves of her mother’s corpse laid out on the kitchen bench and the sobbing of her brother in the furthest corner of the attic. What was the end of the world to a six-year-old beyond the tears of her father and the snapped head of her doll? What was it to anyone but the broken fragments of the life they’d already left behind in the seconds after the end?

The end of the world had been slow, had been quiet, had been for all intents and purposes rather horrible, and yet six-year-old Sidra had never found it in herself to cry.

 

 

*

 

 

Sidra had never considered the fact that the end of the world did not necessarily mean the _end of the world_. People had always preached that the end would desolate life, leaving it in burning ruins, and yet every morning Sidra woke to a sunrise and birds scraping their talons against the metal of the roof; as if the unhurried extinction of the human race was nothing but another speck of dust in the breeze.

For instance, rain. Since when did it rain after the end of the world? And yet there she sat, her feet and left shoulder soaked through where holes had torn in the tarp pulled precariously over her and Seth. Maybe this was what it was like, before people, but the world after the end seemed to be almost constantly rain-soaked, sparse moments of greenery appearing in the gaps of sunshine. Flowers still bloomed every spring, and the heat continued to melt them against the roof every summer. The normality of it all had been disconcerting, once.

She tore off a portion of the bread in her hands, the rest outstretched to where her twin sat fiddling with his rifle. The tarp didn’t afford them much space on a normal day, let alone when the heavens sobbed, and she could feel the mutilated scar on his calf where it rested against her thigh.

“Here,” she said, words half lost to chewing.

Seth took the bread, his damp fingers making it go sodden before their eyes, and quickly shoved it in his mouth. The twisted look he gave her almost made Sidra laugh, but she caught herself. No need to alert anyone nearby to their presence, as if her laughter could cut through the storm itself. People may stutter out the name _T_ _empest_ if they ever caught sight of her through the blood, but she didn’t think she was game enough to test local superstition against the force that had wiped out half of humanity. Better to let nature run her course and do with her world as she pleased.

“We need to do a run,” Seth said out of nowhere, eyes squinting through the rain.

“I know.”

She felt his leg move against hers. “You wanna risk the storm?”

“Sure,” she said, knowing he would see shit through his scope but giving in to the twist of her stomach anyway.

Seth shifted to look at her, frowning. “Okay.”

“Good.”

The process of throwing her gear on and stuffing the pockets with supplies was difficult to say the least, but Seth helped without a word. The silence hung between them, like it always hung between them in the emptiness. Sidra could see the worry carving itself between Seth’s brows despite how he tried to hide it, permanent dents formed on his forehead as a direct result of suffering through the end of the world and coming out the other side with something still to lose.

It had not been kind, especially not to them, and yet they somehow managed to keep their dry eyes forward. Sidra knew they were both haunted though, corpses running havoc through their dreams every time they shut their eyes; she felt Seth shake himself awake every second night from where she laid beside him in their sleeping bags, and knew that certain faces followed her like poltergeists, too. Sidra had known the world could hurt, but it wasn’t until it ended that she realised the hurt was a gnawing one in the back of her mind. A gradual, unending pain. In that, she and the world suffered the same. It was little comfort, considering the state of things.

“Okay,” she said as the last ammo pack slid into her jacket pocket. “Ready?”

Seth looked like he was about to argue, but forced a small nod anyway. She reached across and kissed him on the forehead, on those dents between his brows, in a futile attempt to ease the tension between them.

“See you on the other side, little brother,” she whispered through the rain, before slipping out from under the tarp and over the lip of the roof in one, fluid movement.

Seth stared at the spot she had vacated for a moment too long, engrossed in the way the droplets had scattered and then reformed around her footprint. It was only after he heard the faint sound of her dropping to the street below that he hoisted his rifle to his shoulder and set his sights on his sister’s receding, rain-mottled form.

 

 

*

 

 

The sound of something falling against the wet concrete echoed from the other end of the alley Sidra was in the process of walking down. Hefting her baseball bat from her shoulder to clutch it against her chest, she barely managed to shove herself behind a long-empty bin before the scavenger spotted her. He was young, that much she could tell through the crack in the bin, but old enough to have at least been alive for the end. She couldn’t see any gang markings etched into his exposed skin. _Back-up’s unlikely then_ , she thought, knuckles white around her bat.

Her jacket caught on a piece of wire sticking out from the bin as she tried to move away. The sound of metal rubbing against metal made the boy raise a pistol directly between Sidra’s eyes as she tried to tear herself free.

There was a moment of silence between them and she almost thought he wasn’t going to shoot, but then he made the mistake of lunging towards her instead. He barely made it half a metre before he collapsed to the ground in a wet, bloody heap, a bullet ripping through his forehead in a silence that would save them the hassle of more company. Sidra hadn’t even had to lift her bat.

She glanced up to the familiar rooftop in the distance and raised her hand slightly. She just caught her brother returning the gesture before he disappeared back amongst the fog.

Moving further into the alley, she stripped the boy’s corpse of second-hand ammo and anything useful. Even through the layers of clothing, Sidra could feel his ribs, and she almost regretted Seth putting the bullet in the kid’s brain. Almost. Tugging his jacket off limp arms, she left him sprawled in a pool of his own blood, the rain making it seep slowly out onto the street. A warning from the _Tempest_  to stay out of her fucking way.

The rest of the run continued to a similar rhythm. Seth left four more corpses, Sidra another three, and she managed to loot some food and basic medical supplies from a purged gang site that had been heavily fortified less than a week ago. She had returned to their roof just before sundown with a small bag of supplies, and she’d been in the process of removing her bloodied clothes when Seth tugged her against his chest with trembling hands.

_Seven bodies_. They hadn’t had that many in weeks. She hugged her twin back, ruffling his hair when he eventually pulled away. _Seven bodies_. Sidra smiled softly at Seth as he started rummaging through her loot. He took one look at the meagre ammo she’d managed to scavenge, and sighed.

“Someone’s arrived,” she said eventually around a mouthful of dried meat. “They’re challenging the outcasts, taking their scouting camps. It’s gonna get messy really quick.”

Seth hummed thoughtfully, eyes on his rifle. “We’ll take a break for a few days.”

“We can’t –”

He snapped his eyes to hers, knuckles white around his gun. “You’re not going out there. Not now.” Sidra almost started arguing again, but Seth just reached across and tugged at her wrist, the words dissolving on her tongue. “You’re not going.”

Pulling away from his grip, she busied herself with cleaning the gore from her clothes. In the corner of her eye she could see him watching her. Eventually though, having given up, Seth shook his head with a curse and went back to sorting through the loot.

Sidra felt like they spent a lot of time after the end doing that: sorting and cursing and scrubbing blood from their clothes. It was a simple, brutal existence.

 

 

*

 

 

The waiting almost killed her. If not for the bullets that started flying around the third day, it just might have.

Seth was snoring beside her, his head buried against her thigh, when the first shot rang out a few blocks away. It wasn’t uncommon, stupid folk getting caught out at night only to plunge themselves into deeper shit when the sound of bullets ricocheting against concrete attracted more unsavoury attention. It had happened to them, once, in the beginning, and that single bullet had cost Seth a gash from his knee to his ankle that had taken over two months to fully heal, his slight limp obvious still even now.

At the noise of another gunshot, her brother stirred slightly. Sidra had started to try and coax him back to sleep, sleep he so desperately needed, when the mayhem started. Gunshots screamed through the night, more than they’d ever heard in one place at one time and Seth immediately shot up beside her, almost hitting his head against hers as she scrambled for their weapons. Through the darkness enveloping them, Sidra watched as a nearby building burst into flames.

“Move,” she snapped, eyes trained on the growing ball of orange and red and yellow ahead of them.

They had too many stored supplies to possibly carry them all.  Seth seemed to realise the same thing, cursing under his breath as he tried desperately to shove as much as possible into their two backpacks. She let him continue until she could feel the sweat at her temple; then, she hooked her hand in the collar of his jacket and _ran_ , all but dragging him behind her.

The rooves were cramped in this area of town, close enough to make for an easy jump. The irony of it almost made Sidra laugh as she watched the flames curl and leap between buildings as easily as they did, the heat ever increasing at their backs as they ran. The echoing of bullets continued to ring through the streets below and Sidra cursed the idiocy of men to continue ruining the world even after the end. As if once wasn’t enough?

Seth stumbled beside her, his bad leg giving out under the fear, and he barely managed to grab hold of his sisters outstretched hand as his body began tumbling backwards off the roof. Sidra felt her arm jolt from his weight, felt her shoulder almost tear from its socket as she screamed from the effort, but kept her grip on her brother’s arm even as he dangled over the edge.

“Drop me,” Seth shouted over the mayhem.

“Shut up.”

The flames had reached the building beside them, the inferno nearly consuming the whole block.

“Sid, I can make the fall. Let me go!”

“I’m not – “

“Fucking drop me!”

There was a moment when she just bore her eyes into her brother’s, the sweat from her forehead dropping off the end of her nose onto his cheek, until she spotted the bin about three or four metres below Seth’s dangling form. Not a fatal drop, by any means, but with his leg . . .

Sidra swore to herself, before slowly loosening her grip. Seth looked like he was about to smile, but the sweat on her hand made him fall faster than they’d both anticipated, and within seconds the sound of his body crashing against the corroded metal of the bin rang through the nearby streets. With a mangled cry, Sidra forced herself to her feet and threw herself at the neighbouring building, her sights set on the fire escape hanging off its side instead of her brother below.

She made the jump easily, clambered down the fire escape just as fast despite the way it swayed uneasily on rusting hinges. Within seconds Sidra was running back to where she’d last seen Seth, her pulse loud in her ear as –

“Woah,” came a voice as she collided with someone, and on instinct Sidra went for the knife at her hip, reflexes kicking in. She was in the process of swinging it around before a hand grabbed her wrist and her senses came rushing back to her.

"Sid. Hey, it’s me,” her brother was panting. “It’s me, you’re alright. It’s just me.”

Sidra felt her grip immediately loosen on the knife. Her brother stood before her, all-be-it at an odd angle from the way he was putting all his weight on one leg, but apart from that and the smudge of crimson at his temple, he looked the same as he had on the roof. _Still in one piece_.

“It’s okay,” he was saying again, hands gripping her forearms and her shoulders and her cheeks until she was tugged against his chest quickly in the closest thing they could get to a hug amongst the desolation.

“Come on,” Sidra somehow managed to grit out.

Her twin grunted his agreement, and together they begun stumbling down the street, Seth barely able to keep upright despite Sidra’s vice-like grip around his torso. She kept them moving though, until the heat was an unsavoury memory at their backs and they could hear themselves think again.

Sidra found them a secluded storage closet in a run-down laundromat to squat in for the night. Seth lowered himself against the wall with a muffled groan, leg outstretched at an awkward angle, and said he’d take first watch. Sidra just took his rifle and seated herself inside the doorframe with a grunt, and Seth couldn't find the energy to argue.

She sat awake for most of the night, eyes wandering from the smoke-filled air outside to the bloodied, swollen mess at her brother’s ankle, and knew she should be grateful to have survived it. No doubt the streets they’d fled through would be blood-soaked and charred by sunrise. But it had been their home, that rooftop; she had become accustom to the rain-mottled horizon and the stifling heat at midday and the russet fur of the rats that lived in the gutters. It had been the closest thing they’d been able to call their own since the world had scattered them to the wind.

Call her sentimental, but – well, the grief didn’t let her rest.

 

 

*

 

 

They reverted back to their wandering roots after that, moving from one run-down storage closet to another until the day Seth collapsed to the ground beside her with a shout. Sidra immediately dropped with him, covering his mouth out of instinct to muffle the whimpers he couldn’t help but let slip, and started dragging him deep into a nearby alley. He had tried to help, his good leg scratching and pushing against the pavement, but eventually he’d given up and become a dead weight in his sister’s scrawny arms.

“Seth?” Sidra whispered, voice broken despite herself.

He leant his head back against the graffitied wall behind him, teeth gritted. “I can’t – my leg . . .”

She forced herself to look at it for the first time in days, _really_ look. The bandage she’d feebly tied around the worst cut was dirtied with sweat and grime more than blood, but it was near impossible to miss the purple-black bruising that had consumed nearly his whole ankle. With trembling hands she peeled the bandage away, Seth’s hissing making her stop ever few seconds, and finally got a good look at the damage. The puss-lined cut almost made her gag.

They should have done something earlier, they both knew, but what _was_ there to do? Their world had fallen apart, their home burnt to nothing but cinders, and if she was right then a new gang was trying to claim the area. They couldn’t afford to sit still and wait for death to catch up to them. And yet, somehow, they had been dragging it behind them anyway.

“Fucking hell,” Seth muttered. She could see the veins in his throat from the way he clenched his jaw.

Sidra gingerly felt around the worst of the injury; Seth fought back a cry.

“At least it’s not broken,” Sidra muttered, eyes flickering to the end of the alley out of instinct. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to walk.”

Seth let out a rattling sigh. “Infected, yeah?”

The way she clenched her jaw briefly told him enough.

Sidra ignored whatever he ground out next, eyes scanning the alley. A few metres down, she could just make out a door to what she assumed would be a back storage room of some sort. She stood, hoisted Seth up with her, and started dragging him towards it.

“Sid, hey! Fuck, stop, what are you doing?”

“Stop squirming,” she snapped, the rust of the door giving way easily under her boot. “We need medicine.”

She heard her brother scoff against her neck where his head had fallen to rest as she scoped out the interior of the building. A commercial kitchen. Not entirely safe, but surely no-one would be dumb enough to assume anything worth salvaging was still here.

“Hate to break it to you,” he muttered as she moved to sit him down in the corner. “But you’re not gonna find any in here.”

The second she pulled the door closed, they were enveloped in darkness. Her skin pricked despite herself, the walls suddenly so close she felt as if her insides were going to ooze out of her from the tightness . . . _Fuck_ , she thought, as she slowly tried to ease her racing heart.

Absently, she felt Seth’s hand fall to rest against her thigh, the contact bringing with it the relief of space and comfort.

“Sorry,” she whispered, breaths still coming too fast.

He didn’t even bring it up, knowing there was no use discussing the fear when it would just make her hurt worse. Instead, the two of them let the silence stretch on until Sidra was breathing evenly and the pain had stop flaring through Seth’s leg enough that he could unclench his jaw. Sidra had fingered the torch in her jacket pocket, but knew that sort of light was just a walking disaster waiting to happen.

Eventually, her eyes had adjusted enough that she could make out her brother’s slouched form across the small space. His foot had started trembling slightly.

“We need medicine,” she repeated, eyes on his bad leg. “And don’t argue with me, Seth, ‘cause you’re not gonna win.”

His eyes looked huge in the darkness. “It’s not safe.”

“Newsbreak, it’s not safe anywhere.”

“Sid . . .”

She shuffled closer to him, taking his hand in hers. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Whatever rebuttal had been on his lips, Seth let it fizzle out and that had been that. She’d gathered her things, including the silencer from his rifle, and had helped to hide Seth as much as possible. With a final half-broken smile and a whispered _don’t die, little brother_ , Sidra had slipped back into the musty air of the outside world, leaving Seth alone in the confines of the kitchen.

“Same to you, sis,” he whispered to the darkness.

 

 

*

 

 

A day later, Sidra hadn’t reappeared. Seth gave her the benefit of the doubt and stayed slouched in the corner of the kitchen until the sun set and rose again. Then, gathering what little belongings they still had, he dragged himself to his feet and walked out into the alley on unsteady ground.

It had been raining, like usual.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this was mostly just an excuse to write about my favourite disaster twins, but if i can find the time and motivation i might continue it for another chapter or two (and maybe let everyone's favourite shady smuggler have an appearance). but we'll see how that goes . . .


End file.
